The Legend Of Zelda: Tears Of The Kingdom Review - Welcome To Zelden Ring

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The gaming press (and public) seemed to fall in love with "The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild" when it was released back in 2017. Soon after release, the game became one of the best reasons to own a Nintendo Switch. Like many people, I also bought and played it when it came out, but unlike most, I came away with an odd feeling. As though the game was trying its best to make it difficult for me to enjoy myself. This isn't to say I hated (or even disliked) "Breath of the Wild," but I considered it more "okay to good" rather than a stellar AAA masterpiece.

Starting in on "Tears of the Kingdom," for which Nintendo provided a download code for the purpose of this review, I was a little worried that I'd have the same mostly enjoyable experience tinged by frustration and disappointment. Thankfully that isn't the case here, with "Tears of the Kingdom" both acting as a pretty significant upgrade over the previous title and giving me a feeling I haven't had since first making my way through, "Elden Ring,"  one of 2022's biggest (literally and figuratively) open-world games. And yet, some of the same obnoxiousness of the previous massive Zelda game remains.

"Tears of the Kingdom" is a massive game. I'm sure it's not the largest open world in a video game or anything like that, but it's huge. To the point that it's almost daunting once one exits the tutorial area and finds one's self in the middle of Hyrule with nothing but a single navigation point. And a big part of that is because Hyrule isn't just Hyrule anymore.

Or rather, it's not solely limited to terra-firma. As mentioned before, there are also a large number of floating islands that can be accessed and explored. No one floating land mass is particularly gigantic (when compared to ground-level Hyrule), but they often appear in clusters and can hide a number of materials and other goodies far less common at lower altitudes. Simply figuring out how to navigate through them can be a pretty satisfying puzzle, but finally reaching a hidden chest or shrine makes it feel even more worth the effort.

Rob Rich/SlashGear

It might sound hyperbolic, but I'm being serious when I say that traversing Hyrule in "Tears of the Kingdom" and constantly discovering new locations or spotting interesting shapes in the distance made me think of "Elden Ring" on more than one occasion. One particular area — which I won't spoil here — gave me serious Caelid vibes. The only problem is the "go anywhere" freedom can result in some ridiculous spikes in difficulty.

Much like before, a large part of "Tears of the Kingdom" involves a sort of open-ended approach to most situations — made possible via the continued use of a fairly intuitive sandbox of physics, material properties, and other gameplay mechanics. All of Link's reality-bending powers from "Breath of the Wild" may be gone, but his new collection of magic tools fills in nicely. Or really, better.

Some of these new powers are similar to what we had access to last time, but even those include an added wrinkle to make using them far more interesting and helpful. Many objects can be picked up and moved, but now they can be glued together to create bridges, climbing surfaces, rudimentary vehicles, shields, and a whole lot more. But they can also be glued to Link's weapons to increase their power or add other interesting effects. It's a lot of fun and can be really satisfying, to just play around with combinations until you manage to create something like an exploding javelin or flame-spewing shield.

Ascend is the biggest game-changer, though. This power allows Link to essentially dive straight up and "swim" through solid matter directly above him, then pop out on the other side. It's a much faster way to reach higher ground most of the time, but it's essential for some puzzles, too. Just so long as you remember to use it.

Where "Tears of the Kingdom" starts to falter — though not fall flat, as the previous game did — is in both its random tendencies and a handful of obnoxious elements that were carried over. Weapon durability in "Breath of the Wild" was one of these less-than-perfect elements, and while it's significantly less irritating now that you can turn a stick and a rock into an effective hammer, it's still not perfect. Particularly when it can be such a pain to expand inventory slots in order to carry more at a time (to replace them as they shatter).

Also the weather. Having to swap clothing and armaments to something non-metal in a lightning storm is kind of cool, but Link's constant slipping when trying to climb in the rain is infuriating. Especially when the rain is basically random, so you could be halfway up a mountain and suddenly find yourself stuck because you can't climb any higher until the skies clear. Potions that help with climbing on wet surfaces exist, but most of them don't prevent slipping.

Cooking continues to be a bit of a sore point as well, with the process just as much of a slog as it was before. Cooking in and of itself is extremely useful and worthwhile, but in order to do it you still have to individually select ingredients from the menu and manually drop them into the pot.